The headline above, courtesy of BuzzFeed, one of the minor members of the Democrat/”resistance”/ media collective currently dedicated to spreading misinformation to undermine the President’s leadership during a major crisis, alerts us to just how low these people—I say “these people” because they are not like me and hopefully not like you—will stoop for their political agenda.
That deceptive description is not a fair or accurate description of what happened. This is…. Continue reading
1. From the “Futile isn’t Ethical” files. The hectoring over face-touching is annoying at a time when we need less annoyances. Here’s a useless article that gives elaborate strategies for eliminating face-touching only to admit toward the end that you probably can’t stop. I’ll wager that nobody can stop, since we do it thousands of times a day, often for good reasons, and that with all the other things we have to think about, thinking about NOT doing something natural all day long—which is essentially the strategy the three professors of psychology credited with the article recommend—will do more damage than it addresses.
Here’s a typical passage:
“Now that you are aware of the behavior you want to change, you can replace it with a competing response that opposes the muscle movements needed to touch your face. When you feel the urge to touch your face, you can clench your fists, sit on your hands, press your palms onto the tops of your thighs, or stretch your arms straight down at your sides.”
Here’s another idea that I’m sure everyone will want to adopt while they worry about their jobs, their friends, and where their next meal is coming from:
Self-monitoring is more effective when people create a physical record. You can create a log where you briefly describe each instance of face-touching. For example, log entries might say:
—Scratched nose with finger, felt itch, while at my desk
—Fiddled with eyeglasses, hands tingled, frustrated
—Rested chin on palm, neck sore, while reading
—Bit fingernail, nail caught on pants, watching TV
2. Baseball ethics fix: While there’s no baseball for an undetermined period, baseball continues to spark ethics consideration. Continue reading
(That’s what “Good morning!” sounds like when you’re wearing a mask. At least when you’re wearing my mask: we couldn’t find any of the regular kind, so the best I can do is my “Zombie Werewolf” mask (the above picture is the closest I could find). My wife swears she’ll divorce me if i wear it outside…)
1. Undermine the leader, at all costs. Despite growing evidence that non-deranged Americans are, as they usually do, rallying behind their elected leader in a national crisis (because it is only sensible and patriotic to do so), the mainstream media, all-in as it has been since November 2016 in its effort to damage faith and trust in the President and assist the Democratic party in regaining power, continues to follow the game plan.
For example, in today’s Sunday Times, we have the headline “In This Crisis, U.S. Sheds Its Role As Global Leader,” complaining that even as it promises billions of dollars in aid to Americans as they are trapped at home and locked out of their jobs, businesses, and income, the U.S. should be financing the response to the Wuhan virus around the world. (The next critical piece will be about how the President allowed the debt to explode.) On the front page, we have the mocking headline (over an article by perpetual anti-Trump reporter Maggie Haberman, “Trump Is Faced With Crisis Too Big for Big Talk.” The news in page 11 story is apparently Republican hypocrisy: “GOP, Once United Against Social Programs, Mobilizes to Push for Cash Relief,” as if urgent, once in a century emergency measures constitute a change in philosophy rather than responsible and responsive leadership. On the op-ed pages we get this despicable headline: “America, Not Trump, Will Save America,” continuing the theme of Democratic rejection and denial of the fact that the President is America, and they work together, or they don’t work. This is, of course, necessary preparation for the mews media’s future narrative that if (when) the United States emerges from the current crisis strong and vital, it will be in spite of the President’s efforts, not because of them. These people are willing to weaken our community when it i most important that we be united, because they believe that destroying the Trump Presidency is the prime directive.
These are terrible, unethical people, not because of what they believe, but because of what they are doing, and have been doing. Continue reading
From the Purcellville, Virginia Police Department:
Yesterday, March 18, 2020, an incident occurred at a local grocery store involving juveniles reportedly coughing on produce, while filming themselves and posting it on social media. Police responded and are currently investigating the incident. The grocery store immediately removed the items in question, and has taken appropriate measures to ensure the health of store patrons.
We are asking for parental assistance in monitoring your teenagers’ activities, as well as their social media posts to avoid the increase of any further such incidents. We have learned that this appears to be a disturbing trend on social media across the country, and we ask for help from parents to discourage this behavior immediately. Please talk with your children and explain to them why such behavior is wrong, especially given the current situation regarding the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19). …
Ah, those wacky, wacky kids! Well, they’ll grow out of it, right?
Here’s a poll:
1. Asshole move. Joe Biden says he is going to start a broadcast from his bunker essentially second-guessing everything President Trump does. That’s despicable conduct generally, and wildly unethical conduct in a national crisis.
If anyone can come up with a more civil but equally accurate word for this kind of unprecedented effort to undermine Presidential leadership, please let me know.
2. Meanwhile, apparently terrified that the public isn’t properly blaming Trump for the pandemic, the Washington Post has an entirely anonymously sourced story this morning about how the White House did not take early reports about the virus’s spread in that country that had nothing to do with the pandemic s seriously enough. In “U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic,” we are told, “The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take…. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak…. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month….”
Mark Tapscott notes that on the same op-ed page, nine former intelligence chiefs” warn that: “We cannot let the covid-19 pandemic be a cover for the deeply destructive path being pursued by the Trump administration. The most recent illustration of this unprecedented attack is the continuing dismissal of career intelligence professionals — officers who have ably served both Republican and Democratic administrations regardless of their personal political stripe.” He wonders where those “unsourced” sources for the White House briefings came from, and suggests that “Trump is remaking the leadership of the intelligence community, displacing the entrenched bureaucrats – careerists and career political operators – who tried to sell us the Russia hoax, the Mueller probe and the quid pro quo. So in response, they are weaponizing the coronavirus.” When officials make accusations and won’t go on the record, their motives are suspect, and deserve to be. This is why, once upon a time, the Post and other news organizations were wary of anonymous sources.
3. Kudos to Ann Althouse who mentions, though the Post somehow let this slip its mind, that during this period President Trump was the defendant in an impeachment trial, meeting regularly with his lawyers and Senate members, and was not acquitted until February 5th. The illicit impeachment was designed to cripple the Presidency, and now the Post is accusing the President of not being sufficiently attentive to a Chinese virus outbreak about which these unnamed intelligence officers would not “predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take.”
Ann gets double kudos for noting:
“And here’s a WaPo article from January 21st, 11 days before the aquittal: “Trump administration announces mandatory quarantines in response to coronavirus.”
The White House declared a “public health emergency” and — beginning on Sunday at 5 p.m. — will bar non-U.S. citizens who recently visited China from entering the United States, subject to a few exemptions…. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar also said the Trump administration would quarantine any Americans who had visited China’s Hubei province, where the disease originated, within the past 14 days….
President Trump so far has remained uncharacteristically muted on the coronavirus and praised China’s extraordinary response to the growing outbreak. On Wednesday, he tweeted photos of his Situation Room briefing and said his administration was working closely with China to contain the outbreak….
“That happened at a time when the World Health Organization was recommending that there be no travel restrictions”
4. I don’t even know how to title this. Over on The View, even without the participation of the biggest fool in the room, Joy Behar, the ladies treated its audiences to this;
That’s right. Every nation is working to keep its citizens from spreading the virus, but if it wasn’t for the President’s mishandling of the crisis, Americans would be going about life as usual.
Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax….
The hoax was and is that the Democrats, “resistance” and news media—and Whoopie,—are claiming that Trump is at fault for the pandemic. I wouldn’t call that a “hoax”—it’s just a lie, just like saying that he ever called the disease itself, or the threat it posed, a hoax.
These are all terrible people, and I can only hope that they get what they deserve.
1. I don’t know about you, but I’m just reaching out to random friends to see how they are doing. Some aren’t doing that well, but they appreciate the contact.
2. More of the name game: From a PR release from two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Gail Heriot and Peter N. Kirsanow…
The Commission makes the ill-advised suggestion that referring to COVID-19 with terms like “Chinese coronavirus” is somehow fueling “[t]his latest wave of xenophobic animosity toward Asian Americans.” It is common to refer to infectious diseases by their geographic origin. Examples include Asian flu, Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, Brazilian hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, German measles, Japanese encephalitis, Lyme disease, Marburg virus, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Pontiac fever, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Spanish flu, Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever, and West Nile virus…It is counter-productive to hector the American people (or its leaders) about describing the COVID-19 as “Chinese” or as having originated in China. It did originate there. Ordinary Americans—of all races and ethnicities—who harbor no ill will toward anyone don’t like to have the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights imply that that they are fueling the flames of xenophobic animosity. We can’t blame them. It is insulting.
Our colleagues on the Commission close their statement by writing under the current circumstances no American should be “ostracized solely because of their race or national origin.” That is certainly sensible enough. We would add that Americans should not be ostracized on account of false accusations that their conduct has been racist, xenophobic and hateful. The promiscuous use of those terms needs to stop.
That’s fine and well stated. My position is even more basic. I refuse to participate in mind-control based on the assertion that a factual statement is “racist,” or that someone is the cause of unethical conduct because others choose to behave unethically. Any more Alyssa Milano comments or complaints about Kung Flu jokes, and I’ll be calling the damn thing the Wuhan Virus from the Capital of the Hubai Province in That Big Asian Nation Called China That Endangered The Entire World By The Dishonest, Paranoid Manner In Which It Withheld Crucial Information.
Back off. Continue reading
Incredibly, reporters asked President Trump multiple times yesterday to account for a rumor that one of his aides had referred to the Wuhan virus, aka “Century 21”, or something like that, as the “Kung Fu Flu.” (Heh. )
A. It isn’t “racist” if someone, or many people, did use the quip, and B. Why is that even worthy of discussion? I may be wrong, but as the news media’s efforts to use Big Lies to impugn the President are based on slimmer and more trivial excuses, I expect the majority of the public to eventually figure out what’s going on.
Axios just released a time line, based in part on a new study of how the virus took hold in China. It introduces its work this way:
Axios has compiled a timeline of the earliest weeks of the coronavirus outbreak in China, highlighting when the cover-up started and ended — and showing how, during that time, the virus already started spreading around the world, including to the United States.
Why it matters: A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.
This timeline, compiled from information reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the South China Morning Post and other sources, shows that China’s cover-up and the delay in serious measures to contain the virus lasted about three weeks.
The study, by Southhampton University, is here.
The information indicates clearly that China is accountable. China is responsible for the severity of the pandemic. China deserves to have that responsibility recognized, and those trying to use race-baiting and linguistic stunts to assist in the cover-up are assisting a brutal totalitarian regime. Those who are doing this out of animus for the President are beneath contempt.
No, China should not be asked to pay reparations for its unfortunate role in the crisis, though a recent poll asserts that 42 percent of Americans “feel that China should pay at least some of the world’s coronavirus bills.” This kind of disaster could happen to any nation, though, as you can see in the chart above, it keeps happening to China. It is more likely to happen in a nation like China, that obstructs the free flow of information. It still didn’t intend to infect the world.
I assume.
However, China should accept responsibility, as well as the shame of having a pandemic named after a Chinese starting point.
Started this one at precisely 12:00. Finished at exactly 1:30 pm.
An administrative note: I don’t censor comments by the regulars, but I’m going to be more aggressive in sending off-site notes of displeasure when homophobic, sexist and gratuitous ad hominem insults turn up. (Note: it is always acceptable to refer to someone as an idiot who has written something idiotic, if you explain why it’s idiotic.) We’ve never had a problem here with racist language (in part because I keep spamming comments from the Chimpmania mob), and I will continue to allow wide latitude regarding comments that are self-indicting (making fun of Hillary’s legs, for example, is a jerk move). But while no forum where intelligent participants exercise sharp critical judgment on lazy assertions and knee-jerk positions will ever be “safe,” no one who comes here should ever feel personally attacked or denigrated. I need to do a better job making sure of that. All assistance will be appreciated.
1. Wuhan Virus jerk update:
I assume everyone now knows that O.J. is a stone-cold sociopath, but it’s considerate of him to keep reminding us. At least he didn’t say that he was furious that the Wuhan Virus restrictions on travel were impeding his search for Nicole and Ron’s killer.
This does explain the intellectual basis for Bernie Sanders’ support, however. Continue reading
1. I missed this: Roman Polanski, with his “An Officer and a Spy” won the directing, and screenplay awards at the French Cesar awards last month, and the results were greeted by protests. After Polanski’s best-director award was announced, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” actress Adele Haenel and director Celine Sciamma walked out of the theater.
It was Polanski’s fifth Cesar in the directing category, He’s scum and a rapist as well as a fugitive from justice, but he is and has always been a great film director. Polanski did not attend the ceremony because, he said, he anticipated it would turn into a “public lynching.”
Haenel shouted, “Well done, pedophilia!” as she left the hall. In an interview with The New York Times about his nominations, she had said, “Distinguishing Polanski is spitting in the face of all victims,” she said. “It means raping women isn’t that bad.”
Think about that statement a bit, if you have to. It makes no sense at all, but articulates the logic of the cancel culture. The film is the film, just as a song is a song and a painting is a painting. None of these are the same as their creators. Just as the fact that art created by a saint doesn’t make it any better, the fact that other art is created by vile human beings doesn’t change the quality of the art for the worse. The law punishes people for bad deeds. Society punishes them in many other ways. What artists build, accomplish, and contribute to society are independent of the artists personally.
Bill Cosby’s albums are still funny, and nobody is saying that raping women isn’t that bad by enjoying those classic performances or by honoring Cosby as a performer. Harvey Weinstein produced too many great films to boycott.
Personally, I refuse to support Cosby, Woody Allen, Polanski and others who disgust me, but their work remains what it was and is, and burying it punishes the culture. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 
I’m embarrassed that I didn’t come up with “Fu Manchu Flu”…
Yesterday, Chris Marschner set an Ethics Alarms record with two Comments of the Day in a single day. His riff on (yecchh!) “Imagine’ was #1, this more traditional COTD is #2. I’m equally grateful for this one, because I had eschewed mentioning the small matter of the Obama response to the 2009-2010 H1N1 virus and the press coverage of that response. Why? Well, I get tired of being accused of mouthing conservative talking points, even when they are only conservative talking points because the left-wing mainstream media unethically ignores them. It also seems like whataboutism, though it is not: if resistance-allied pundits are going to tell the public that President Trump’s response to the Wuhan virus pandemic is deadly and incompetent, then they are obligated to explain why the previous President’s unquestionable worse response to his virus challenge was considered just fine, thanks. Nonetheless, the “Wait, how can you square your criticism of Trump with your Obama cheerleading?” refrain has become a cliche, even though it has done so because it has been a legitimate question so often.
Thus, twice in a single day, Chris Marschner saved me from a task I was not eager to complete. His starting point was the note in my post about Joe Biden planning on a regular feature online second-guessing the President’s response to the Wuhan virus.
Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/21/20: I See Terrible People.”